Drugs: Prisons

(asked on 23rd February 2018) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the (a) quality, (b) availability and (c) effectiveness of drug treatment services in prisons.


Answered by
Jackie Doyle-Price Portrait
Jackie Doyle-Price
This question was answered on 5th March 2018

Drug treatment services in prisons have been systematically reviewed over the past 18 months, as a part of the development of a new service specification. NHS England and their partners support development of a new commissioning service specification as part of a quality improvement programme for prison health services. The NHS England teams that commission these assessments also hold quarterly performance review meetings with drug treatment providers, and recommission the services as a part of a three to five year cycle (or earlier if required).

On average, there was no wait for drug treatment services and nearly all (95%) people started their first treatment intervention within three weeks of being assessed but would start immediately if it was clinically appropriate to do so. Regular needs assessments are undertaken by NHS England to identify specific establishment-level needs.

Effectiveness is measured by Public Health England through the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System. In total, 37,330 individuals left treatment between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2017. Of the individuals that left treatment in the year, 10,066 (27%) were discharged as ‘treatment completed’, up from 23% in 2015-16. Further information is available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/677500/OFFICIAL-SENSITIVE_secure_setting_annual_report_2016-17FINAL-v1.2.pdf

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